


The Sum of Our Parts

by bwbies, Raen44



Category: RWBY
Genre: Body Horror, Child Abuse, Cybernetics, Cyberpunk AU, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, No Enabler!!!!!!, Nonbinary Character, OKAY THE TAGS ARE KINDA OMINOUS BUT THERES LOTS OF SOFT SHIT HERE TOO, Panic Attacks, Pollination, Severe Dysphoria, Trans Blake, Trans Female Character, Useless Lesbian Weiss Schnee, Weiss needs a hug, better safe than sorry theres some wack shit here, more characters and ships to be tagged, nb weiss, put on some synthwave for the vibes(tm), queer writing by queer authors for queer readers, tw for a lot of cybernetics/body mods!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24836521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bwbies/pseuds/bwbies, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raen44/pseuds/Raen44
Summary: Ruby Rose is a chop-shop cyberneticist, just trying to make her way in the world.  Weiss Schnee is a living mannequin for the Schnee Robotics Corporation, desperate for some semblance of independence.  Blake Belladonna is an underground hacktivist, fighting for the freedom of the oppressed.  Yang Xiao Long is the up-and-coming robot fighter of the year, and all she wants is the title.The city of Remnant is the last safe haven on the planet, but it wasn't supposed to be that way.  Something went wrong and now the fate of humanity lies in the balance.  What can these four girls do about it?
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 73
Kudos: 111





	1. Remnant

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! Welcome to our new project! I became enamored with the idea of a cyberpunk au recently and through some serendipitous happenstances met Sath and we decided to collaborate on this story! I'm super excited about this project and we've got some really cool ideas to explore in this world! Enjoy these glimpses into the lives of cyberpunk team RWBY and let us know what you think! -Raen
> 
> here's to my first rwby fic in 5 WHOLE ASS years!! almost ever since i met raen we've been working on this and we're super pumped to be able to share it! its been a lil while comin but theres a LOT we have planned out and we hope ull enjoy it! -sathona (bwbies)
> 
> HUGE thanks to [WhatOtherPlanet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatOtherPlanet/pseuds/WhatOtherPlanet) for giving this a beta!! PLEASE go read their work (it might even br great is one of my favourite fics of ALL time)
> 
> oh, also, here's a quick synthwave playlist if ur looking for [vibes](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/48zP5k2EraVeVU7WQn6nbI?si=ZRcEZ4DIShyisS4EcVNR_g)

It was a rainy evening in the city of Remnant. Dark clouds hung heavy over the digital dystopia, casting the brightly lit city in a dreary monochrome pall. Paradise to some, prison to others, Remnant was the last inhabited city on the planet, spanning nearly the entire continent of what used to be called Solitas. The name meant “loneliness” in Old Mantellian, and some old-timers still called it “the Lonely City” when they were feeling particularly woesome about their lot in life; mostly though, it was just Remnant, because there's nowhere else to be.

Neon lights and glaring screens cast long shadows across the streets of the lower city. A figure clad in a dark red cloak peeled themself out of the deep shadow of a broken term on the corner, making their way through the progressively more cramped streets. Black boots splashed through the slowly forming puddles as the figure skirted a corner, staying out of sight as a cone of latticed blue light slowly trawled past the dark mouth of the alleyway. A glint of metal flashed beneath the cloak, but was gone in an instant. Pure silver eyes reflected the lights of the city as the figure checked the street- left, right, then left again. Apparently satisfied, the figure crouched in a brief moment of tension reminiscent of a sprinter’s pose. Then, with a click, a building whine, and a blur of red light the figure was on the other side of the street. The figure looked back over their shoulder, checking the street once more before slipping into an unmarked door, the holographic padlock and chains flickering back into place as it clicked shut.

The woman in the cloak pulled back her hood with a sigh of relief, the dim light of the garage flickering back from her eyes as she blew a strand of dark red hair out of her face.

"Took you long enough," a voice called from within.

"You know what those streets are like!” she chirped, shaking the rainwater off her hood. “I’m  _ really _ speedy, but even I can only go so fast while avoiding those drones." 

A figure stepped out of the shadows, a tall blonde man wearing an unbuttoned shirt and a pair of jeans. The faintly glowing seams of cybernetic plates criss-crossed his chest, and a sleek metal monkey tail curled behind him.

"Good to see you, Ruby," He said with a grin, "Glad you could make it."

Ruby giggled and waved a dismissive hand. "You offered me first dibs, Sun! Well, technically, I  _ called _ dibs, but I’ll let you say you offered,” she said with a cheeky grin, "now show me what you got!"

The man gave a bellowing laugh and turned to lead her further into the garage. Lights snapped on, illuminating a wide room with a hovercart parked in the center. A jumbled pile of machinery that clearly exceeded the cart’s max recommended weight was stacked on top of it, outmoded antigravs whining in protest. Sun patted the side of it and the cart listed heavily, making him snatch his hand back like it’d been burned, giving the cart a placating gesture as it settled back on its overworked antigravs.

Another figure was poring over something at a workbench set into the wall. Blue hair spiked up from underneath a thick pair of goggles as the man looked up and gave a slight wave.

"Gotta lotta shit for you this time, Ruby!" The man called, immediately going back to his work. A modified plasma rifle sat disassembled on the workbench in front of him.

"I can't wait to get my hands on it, Nep!" Ruby clapped her hands together happily, bouncing up to the cart and giving it a quick once-over. The grin on her face seemed to grow even bigger, and she held out a hand over the pile.

Red lines sliced down the center of her palm, and an optic sensor cast a line of bright red light. It scanned over the pile and readouts began to pop up in the corner of Ruby's vision. The configuration and materials of every piece of equipment in the pile scrolled through her consciousness at lightning speed.

Her pinky twitched.

She glanced to the side, checking the room. Neptune was still working on his gun, and Sun had moved to an old coffee machine set up on another desk. Ruby's brow furrowed. Something wasn't right.

Her ear shifted slightly, and another readout appeared in her vision. A few flicks of her eyes and twitches of her fingers, and she had tuned out the ambient noise of the garage.

The rain had stopped.

She heard a splash.

Her head snapped back towards the entrance, optic mods cycling through several ranges of detection- normal, infrared, UV. She heard another splash.

"Sun, someone's here." Her voice was steady, but inside she was terrified.

The tailed man reached under the desk and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. Neptune looked up from his work, thumbing a button to snap his rifle back into one piece. He carefully picked it up and slid a clip into its reciever.

The magazine made a soft 'click' as it hit home.

Everything exploded.

The door Ruby had slipped in through was blown off of its hinges, black clad figures storming in behind it.

Adrenaline flooded Ruby's system, and suddenly everything slowed down. Red crept into the edges of her vision, the world blurring slightly around her before her eyes had a chance to catch up to her new speed. Distantly, she heard the screams of Sun and Neptune, the shouts of these unknown soldiers. The door blasted right for her, but she stepped to the side and ducked, feeling her cloak ripple as the inch thick sheet of metal passed, impacting against the hovercart and knocking it to the ground. A timer ticked away in the corner of her vision, the red tinge pulsing slightly in time with the countdown- she didn’t have much time left to burn.

She flipped up her cloak, reaching behind her and pulling a red block of metal from where it was secured to her back. She thumbed a switch and flicked her wrist, silver seams appearing first before the block extended and unfolded into a massive railgun, as long as she was tall. Red and blue bolts of electricity flickered up and down its rails as she brought the weapon to bear. Her face set into a grim expression, silver eyes narrowing, and time caught back up.

A crack like thunder echoed through the tiny garage, a shockwave rippling out from where Ruby had fired. Her hair and cape fluttered in the artificial wind, but the shock absorbers in her calves kept her steady on the floor. Sun and Neptune stumbled back from the door, the door which now no longer existed. A 2-meter-wide crater now sat where the soldiers had been storming the garage.

"Sun! Neptune! Go!" she cried. There were bound to be more soldiers outside, but her shot had bought them precious seconds.

Both men reacted in a scramble, leaping to their feet. Sun pulled a lever on one side, Neptune throwing a switch on the other. A motorcycle lowered from the ceiling on a robotic arm as a hidden door swung up, revealing the open (if a bit dingy) alleyway behind the shop. Ruby caught Sun's eyes with her own, and nodded.

With a roar, the motorcycle blasted off into the night, leaving only Ruby and the rapidly approaching soldiers. She slipped the gun back into its place in the small of her back and pulled her cloak tight around her body. She backed into a shadow in the corner of the garage as she pulled her hood up over her face, and just before the first soldier rounded the ruined door, she shimmered out of view.

Just another night in the city of Remnant.

\---

Weiss Schnee was not an uneducated person. 

She understood, at a rudimentary level, the laws that governed the universe; including those that affected the refraction and reflection of light. 

Given the guidelines set by the laws of optics, she could make the educated guess that the image reflected in the mirror before her was, in some way, shape, or form, her. However, the image in the perfectly polished mirror didn’t reflect (ha) that same statement. The image of the body in the mirror agitated the corners of her mind. It was her, but it wasn’t  _ hers. _ It hadn't been hers in a very, very long time. The silver surface reflected back to her optical sensors every artificial cell of perfectly unmarked skin, every perfectly positioned hair. Her face was perfectly symmetrical, fingers on opposite hands the exact same length, posture sculpted to perfection. Not a single thing about her body was out of place. 

It was all so... unnatural. 

It wasn’t her.

This body was not hers.

It belonged to the Schnee Robotics Corporation.

If one squinted and looked very, very close, they might find the nearly invisible seams running all over her body. Just the slightest hint of blue against her nearly stark-white skin. The lines angled up and down her arms, over her chest, down her legs, even up into her hair. The only distinct sign that her entire body was synthetic.

Replaceable.

Every single part of her could be produced in an SRC factory.

Every part except one.

Her brain was the only organic part of her still left in this shell, this machine, this... marionette. It was riddled with implants, compartments of neurotransmitters to modulate stress and mood, a graft at the base of her brain stem translating neural impulses into commands that her artificial limbs could understand and a matching translator in her thalamus to ensure compatibility. But at its core, it was still organic. Her cerebellum, her cerebral cortex, the parts of her brain that determined individuality, personality, conscious thought, emotions, had remained untouched. It was still hers. Jacques Schnee had taken nearly every part of her identity from her, but there was still that one, tiny part that was irrevocably, unconditionally, Her.

She wanted to cry every time she looked in this mirror, every time she saw the hideous reflection of her synthetic shell. She wanted to, but she couldn't. Her false eyes didn't have tear ducts. Not really, anyway. They self-lubricated, applying just the right amount to keep them working. No more, no less. It was efficient. It meant control. It meant presentability. It meant no tears. 

(it meant countless nights spent in her bed shaking with dry sobs, splashing her face with water to get any sort of sensation of emotional release- often to little effect.)

Weiss Schnee was a walking advertisement for the Schnee Robotics Corporation, and she hated it.

Her perfectly shaped eyelids blinked in a perfectly precise movement. She tilted her head slightly, the perfect synthetic skin of her neck folding in exactly the right places as her mechanical muscles shifted underneath. A frown marred her perfectly shaped lips, and even that somehow looked perfect on her immaculate face. 

It was

All

So

Fake.

The Heiress to one of the largest companies in Remnant finally tore her gaze from the mirror. She had duties to fulfill. Pointless meetings to attend, vapid appearances to make. Her entire life as a doll for her father's corporation to live. A life that sometimes... she wasn't sure was worth living.

But despite her existential quandary, the world turned onwards.

Her synthetic shell moved on autopilot through the halls of the corp’s headquarters, making its way down to the garage where it would be carted away to its first appearance of the day. A sleek, black, driverless vehicle awaited her. The vehicle's interior was plush, fully modernized, and full of every luxury one could think of. Weiss cared for none of it. She disregarded so many of her body's feedback signals these days that material comforts were nearly meaningless to her now. She could register that the seat she was perched on was soft and comfortable, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

A flash of red through the car's window registered on her visual sensors. Her body blinked, and it took a moment to register. With a flick of her eyes and a neural command, a small window appeared in the corner of her vision, rewinding to replay the flicker that her eyes had caught. The feed froze on the form of a young woman clad in a red cloak. Her body's face contorted slightly in confusion as she studied the image. The woman didn't look like someone who belonged in Atlas. The red cloak alone clashed harshly with the cold blues and emotionless chrome of the floating district, not to mention the scuffs on her boots, the scratches on her leg braces, the tattered hems of her jeans.

Her optics had caught the barest glimpse of the woman’s face, and Weiss noticed before anything else that she was modded. Unlike her though, this woman didn't seem to want to hide that fact. Red lights had blinked at her from chrome silver eyes, and Weiss found herself drowning in them. A small, forgotten part of herself screamed from a corner of her mind. She yearned for what this woman had, for the autonomy of choice.

She glanced down at her hands, folded neatly over one-another in her lap. Neural signals traveled through her synthetic body faster than she could think, and one of her hands turned over, revealing a perfectly smooth palm and perfectly shaped nails. Part of her didn't quite understand why people chose to willingly modify their bodies. She had never had any choice in the matter, and so the idea left a bad taste in her mouth.

A thought passed through her brain, the part of it she knew was hers. She had access to the entire library of the company's resources. She theoretically had the authority to add any SRC produced augments to her synthetic shell. She had never exercised that right, of course, but she could, if she wanted to. 

She looked back out the window, hoping in vain to catch a glimpse of this red-clad woman again. To see once more who had sparked this faint hint of hope inside her. 

She caught her own gaze reflected back at her. 

Maybe... maybe she could still make this body hers…

\---

Blake hissed.

The pain crawled up her spine like hot magma, spiderwebbing through her ribs and across her chest. She reached up and touched the back of her neck, nearly jerking her hand away when it brushed up against the thin strip of metal there.

Her weekly upkeep injections always came with a healthy dose of pain, and she welcomed it. She welcomed the reminder that this was real, that  _ she _ was real, that this world, and everything in it, was real. More importantly than that, though, it was something she could control. This pain, these changes- they were one of the few things in her life that she had chosen of her own volition.

And it was worth it.

The euphoria that followed the pain was heaven. The unbearable heat of the pain faded to a comfortable warmth, settling in her chest like a gentle lover. Her lungs filled with air, and she felt like she could fly all the way to Atlas.

There weren't any immediate changes of course, there never were, but after so many years of it the effects were certainly noticeable. Her hair was longer, her skin was softer (the natural bits at least), and her chest had certainly filled out as she matured. Her initial grimace of pain now morphed into a small smile as she rode the euphoria back down.

Injections were a sacred time for Blake. Once a week, she would sneak away to a hidden corner of the Menagerie that the rest of her gang didn't know about, and have a moment to herself to perform her little ritual. The mods weren't perfect, she knew the pain wasn't normal, but part of her appreciated it. Appreciated the way it grounded her. There were very few things in her life that she had control over, and the pain was a reminder that this was one of them.

All good things must come to an end however, and the constant noise of the industrial underbelly of Remnant brought her back down from her high. The distant noises of machinery were unescapable down here, and as a resident it was something you eventually got used to. Blake had long ago tuned those out as white noise, so that was not what had broken her reverie. No, she could hear shouting coming from somewhere outside of her safe haven. The sound of breaking glass reached her ears, the receptors on top of her head twitching at the sound.

Shaking herself out of her stupor, the young woman scrambled to her feet. She gathered up her things and hurriedly stuffed them into the small bag on her hip. She had just zipped it up when the door to her abode burst open. The bald head of the chapel's caretaker stared back at her with fear in his eyes. Blake understood that fear, and it was quickly reflected in her own.

"Go!" The man shout-whispered.

She was gone before he even finished speaking. A single subvocal command word and she imagined the ripple of a neural impulse traveling down her spine, terminating in the mod at her tailbone. Her body flickered, and then faded from sight. A slight gust of wind passed, and her invisible form slipped out through the still-open door.

The door slipped shut with a soft click of the latch as it settled into place.

The caretaker let out a sigh of relief.

Then the door burst apart in a hail of splinters, scattering all over the small room. The man whirled around, backing away from the doorway.

"She's not here!" He cried, eyes filled with a mixture of fear and defiance.

"I can see that." The voice was deep, grating, and unnatural. The owner of the voice stalked into the room.

Dark red hair poked out from behind a cruel looking mask. Silver horns curled back over the man's head. There was a soft click as he unsheathed the sword at his hip.

Blake did not return to that shrine.

\---

Clang!

Metal on metal. The grinding of gears. The harsh whine of servos.

A crowd roars, and the competitors drink it in.

Yang feels her arm fill with power; the massive metal appendage swings around and clobbers her opponent in the face, sending them staggering back against the barrier of the arena.

A thought, and she advances. The whine of overworked hydraulics echoes around the arena as she charges at her opponent. A sound bubbles up from her stomach. She's not sure if her body feels it, but the squawkbox in her neck sparks to life. A brutal, guttural sound echoes out of her metal form as she crashes into the other fighter, sparks flying as her shoulder collapses its chest cavity. She plants her feet and lifts her shoulder, grabbing the opposing bot by the legs and  _ heaving _ . The opposing fighter is flipped over her, landing in a heap of tangled limbs in the center of the arena. It lets out a grinding groan as it tries to situate itself, but is cut short before it could rise by a brutal elbow dropped into the already concave chest.

A faint whine from strained servos, and then everything was still.

Her grin of metal teeth parts, flames spewing from her mouth as a brutal noise of victory screeches from her squawkbox once more. Metal fists pound against her metal chest as she wheels around towards the crowd in a victory lap. A loudspeaker crackles, and the declaration of her sweet, sweet victory echoes throughout the arena.

"Ember Celica is the winner!" The crowd goes wild. Waves of cheers washing over her auditory sensors. These are her people. This is where she belongs.

And then there is a wave of black, and she was out. Her eyes blinked open, red fading down to lilac as the rush faded. She drew a deep breath into her lungs, letting the sensation of being human again wash over her. She finally sat up and pulled herself out of the control pod, sensors and diodes unplugging and falling away from her body. She grinned over to her opponent, stepping out of his own pod, and threw him a wink. The grey-haired boy grumbled and flashed a middle finger at her, which only made her reel back in a laugh.

On the stage in front of them sat her pride and joy. Ember Celica. A twelve foot tall robot built to tear anything dumb enough to get in front of it to shreds. The bright yellow paint was scuffed and scorched from her fight, but the flaming heart emblazoned on its chest was still clearly visible. Yang Xiao Long was a robot fighter, and one of the best in the league.

Footsteps drew her attention, and she glanced over to see a large man in a tailored suit approaching her. Two younger women followed behind him, both clearly modded with some of the more deadly tech on the market. She grinned.

"Junior!" She called, "Enjoy the show? I do hope you're not here to back out on our deal."

"Yeah, yeah, you'll get your parts," Junior grumbled, waving a hand. The twins advanced past the both of them, approaching Yang's opponents. That was the deal when you challenged Yang Xiao Long- if you lost, she got your parts. 

"Good performance out there, kid," Junior continued, "But try to drag it out a little more next time, yeah? We're running a business here."

"Oh come on, I didn't take him down that fast, did I?" Honestly, she wasn't sure. Time was different in the robot, and she lost track of things like that. Got lost in the fight, the exhilaration, the rage. It felt good, freeing.

Junior raised an eyebrow. "Xiao Long, you put that kid on the ground in under a minute.”

She winced. Ok, yeah, that may have been a bit overkill.

"Ahh... ok, point taken," She said, "I'll uh, try not to go so hard next time?" She couldn't see Junior roll his eyes behind the dark sunglasses, but she knew he had.

"Sure you will," his tone belying the fact that he very clearly did not believe her, "Grab your parts and scoot, you know how this crowd gets. Maybe next time I'll find you a fighter that makes you actually try."

"Hey, I try!" She said, indignant. 

Junior gave her a look.

“I try to have fun, that is." Her grin made him roll his eyes again and he jerked his thumb towards where the pit crew were carting the broken robot out of the arena.

"Go."

"Alright, alright, don't get your panties in a twist, grumpy butt." She threw her hands up in defeat and followed his directions. She could feel his glare boring into the back of her head for a moment and just grinned. Ruby was gonna get quite the haul tonight. She planted her hands on her hips as she approached the pit crew, glancing over the pile of twisted metal they were working through. "What d'you got for me tonight, boys?"

She had the best job in the world.

  
  



	2. i've got a bulletproof heart (you got a hollow point smile)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weiss seeks out a back-alley cyberneticist! She finds one, with a side of existential crisis and gay panic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome back! this chapter was mostly me, with a raen edit, like the last chapter was mostly raen with a me edit  
> we hope you enjoy it!! things are starting to pull together :) -sathona
> 
> "Welcome back, friends! We get some actually relevant interaction this chapter, and start to formulate a plot! We get a look into Weiss' psyche and how she's dealing with her situation (which totally won't be a big plot point what are you talking about). Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter and thanks for reading!" - Raen
> 
> thanks again to [ What Other Planet ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatOtherPlanet/pseuds/WhatOtherPlanet) for the beta!!!! im BEGGING yall to read their stuff its amazing!!

Neon signs and light-up cyberfashion reflected in the lingering puddles of rain from last night’s storm, a dizzying lightshow to those unused to the visual noise. Vale always prettied up at night- cyberneticists and tech shops putting out their best and brightest (mostly brightest) wares and advertisements to draw the eye of those passerby who were in need of an upgrade. 

Weiss kept her head down as she picked her way through the crush of humanity that made up Vale’s night streets, shifting uncomfortably to get her borrowed (stolen) ratty jacket’s hood to stop itching the plug at the base of her skull. The sheer amount of digital interfaces it was picking up down here in the main city was disorienting to the point of overstimulation, and the hood was just a scratchy insult to injury.

 _This doc had better be worth this,_ she thought as she stepped around a gaudy digi-fabric tent advertising cosmetic eye mods and into an alleyway suffused with a sunset red glow. Old-fashioned neon tubing lined the brick walls of the alley, twisting into the shape of a rose beside a steel door COVERED in stickers and luminescent paint tags. Another rose decal and a burning heart in red and yellow paint respectfully, a sticker advertising a business called ‘JNPR Farms’, another with a portrait of a muscular, shirtless man flexing with the slogan ‘SSSN’s Out, Guns Out’, and - Weiss squinted, willing her eyes to zoom in - a small heart, laser etched into the steel of the door with the letters ‘STR’ inside it. Without optical mods, it would be near invisible to the naked eye. 

She eyed the door with trepidation, less annoyed than she had been on the trip over but doubly nervous. This was her last chance to turn back without risking her father’s ire. She turned her hand over, running a thumb along the microscopic seams along her fingers, agonizing over whether or not she should take this step away from the relative safety of the SRC, when the choice was neatly plucked from her hands as the door in front of her swung open.

For a moment, all Weiss could process was _yellow_ , before blinking to refocus her eyes to normal zoom so that the shapeless mess in front of her resolved into an only minutely less shapeless mess of golden hair, cascading down broad shoulders over a- a _flannel? Really? What is this, the 2030s?_

Putting the fashion faux-pas aside (for the moment, of course), Weiss took in the rest of the image: faded, red-checked flannel untucked, but bunched up enough about the hips for her to notice how _sinfully_ tight those jeans were and feel the instant jolt of heat to her cheeks (Note to self- remove ability to blush) as she immediately ripped her eyes back upwards, to avoid being cau-

“Like what you see, hun?”

Shit. 

If she was being honest, the view from the front wasn’t worse in the slightest, but the sharp frown across the blonde’s face was enough to sober her up some- she was a _Schnee_ , not some lecherous creep in some back alley.

Schooling her face into a more presentable expression, she managed to stumble her way through an “Apologies, I didn’t intend to, ah,” before the gorgeous (where did _that_ come from, Weiss?) woman before her decided to throw her a bone in the form of an _immensely_ strong hand clapping her on the shoulder.

Weiss managed to suppress a shriek that would have most certainly been unbecoming of her station, stifling it into an oddly high-pitched cough- drawing a raised eyebrow from the blonde but otherwise was allowed to slide. 

“Sorry for scaring you there, princess,” she drawled, “Most people hanging out in alleyways with their hoods up around here are bad news. But uh, judging by how you just about jumped out of your cybers when I caught you ogling, I think you’re probably fine.”

Weiss bristled at the easy dismissal, gearing up to overcome her suddenly heavy tongue to assert that she could in fact be QUITE threatening, thank you very much, but a quick glance at the impressive and very much NOT synthetic biceps under the flannel’s rolled up sleeves dried her mouth up as quickly as she could find the words. 

Unfortunately, the blonde noticed.

She only responded with a quirk of an eyebrow, a knowing smirk, and a subtle flex, damnable smile widening cheekily as Weiss fought (valiantly, but ultimately in vain) to keep the heat she could feel rising in her face from showing itself.

“Now,” the blonde said, leaning in close, “you’re here to see Rose, yeah?”

Weiss only nodded in response, not quite willing to trust herself with speaking. (Her mouth was still so dry, she didn’t know that was still possible)

“Well, lucky you, you’re in the right place. Just don’t hold back anything important when you’re in there, yeah?” Piercing lilac eyes caught and held Weiss’s blue for a tense beat before softening, the hand on her shoulder giving an almost gentle pat. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, Schnee. Grapevine says you’ve had some fucked up stuff happen to you, and I guess we’re damn bleeding hearts around here because we’re willing to work on you. Don’t make us regret it, okay?” 

Weiss gave a shaky nod, and the tension in the blonde’s mouth released, that easy smile sliding back into place like nothing had even happened. Her hand gave one final pat to Weiss’s shoulder before leaving to hook a thumb over her own at the door. 

“Through there and to the left, she’ll meet you in her workshop.” Weiss nodded, noticing too late the smile on the blonde’s face morphing from easy and open to shit-eating. “Great! It was _Weiss_ to meet you, Schnee!”

What. That was the worst pun she’d ever heard. It was a disgrace, downright- her mouth opened to retort, but the blonde had already waltzed out of the alleyway, cackling at the positively poleaxed expression on Weiss’s face. 

She huffed and took a moment to collect herself, leaning heavily against the wall of the alley and rubbing her face in her hands. She hadn’t even met Rose yet, and it already felt like half of her body was malfunctioning. All of her behavioral training had not prepared her for these sorts of interactions.

A few deep breaths later, she stepped through the heavy steel door, trying not to shudder at the finality of the sound of it closing behind her. Hopefully, the most “exciting” parts of the evening were done with, and she could get what she came for and leave. 

She really should have known better.

\---

Turning down the hall to the left, as that… excitable blonde had said, she soon came to another door, this one propped open to let dim red light and old-style punk music out into the hall. She stepped gingerly over a thick cable laid across the doorway, and with a quick neural flick her eyes readjusted to the low light, letting her get a better feel for the lay of the room. 

The glow that had leaked into the hall was provided by long retro-style neon lights where the walls met the ceiling, punctuated by rhythmic pops of blue-white flame from a figure bent over a workstation along the wall opposite from her. The music was louder now (obviously)- heavier on the bass and drums than she might have preferred, but the vocalist definitely had talent that she could appreciate. 

A well-loved (ratty) couch sat against a back wall, heavily decorated with patches that seemed to be both fashionable and functional, if the stuffing leaking from one of the cushions was any indication. Posters decorated the wall behind it, and spare parts and tools (and an entire cyberleg) adorned the coffee table in front of it. In the horseshoe formed by workbenches on the opposite side of the room sat what appeared to be a tattoo artist’s chair, though Weiss noted with some apprehension that the cuffs where the wrists and ankles would rest appeared to be aftermarket. 

Refocusing on the figure (Rose, presumably) across from her, Weiss could see the source of the pops of light- a micro-TIG welder in her left hand, methodically dotting and dragging a weld along what appeared to be the casing of a cybernetic arm. 

As Weiss stepped further into the room, she couldn’t shake the sense of familiarity she found in Rose. It wasn’t in the clothing- she’d never seen anyone in a pair of grease-stained coveralls unzipped, with the arms tied about the waist, and a black tank-top before, let alone someone who could pull it off. She would have remembered _that_. 

Weiss took a step further into the room, and Rose straightened up. She knocked her welding mask up- even ocular mods were sensitive to the intense light of welding arcs -and dragged a forearm across her brow. She turned, and Weiss beheld the brightest smile she’d ever seen. She could have sworn it lit up the room more than the welder had, and it stopped her in her tracks.

Before her was the same girl from the week before, the one that Weiss had never thought she’d see again, the splash of light and color and _life_ she had seen painting the streets of Atlas, the one who’d catalyzed this decision to come here in the first place. 

She was here, right here, standing right in front of her with a grease stain on her cheek and red-tipped hair disheveled from the mask and pure silver eyes pulling her in and once again Weiss was drowning in them and-

“Hey there! Welcome to The Rose Bodysho- uh, you okay?”

Weiss sucked in a deep breath, letting it out slowly to calm her racing mind. What was THAT?

“I’m just fine, thank you, I simply was…” lost in your eyes? Staring? Committing your face to memory? “Distracted,” she finished lamely. 

The girl (Rose, she assumed) gave a chuckle, blissfully (agonizingly?) unaware of the nature of Weiss’s distraction. Gods she really needed to run a diagnostic; something was DEFINITELY malfunctioning.

“It IS a pretty sweet setup down here! Nowhere near as fancy as some workshops up in the cloud, sure,” she rubbed the back of her head, a bit sheepish, “but we make up for it with heart!” Rose capped off her little speech with a shockingly earnest grin, the spark of genuine good intention in her eyes coming close to winding Weiss again- _get a GRIP, Schnee, you’ve barely met this girl -_ so she deflected with a scoff. 

“Heart doesn’t keep the lights on, though, does it?” a pout threatened to take over Rose’s face, and she could feel her train of cynicism losing steam by the second, “...but, it did bring me to your door, so perhaps there is something to be said for your… gumption.” (4/10 on the recovery, Weiss, but nice try)

Thankfully, Rose seemed to be able to decode her apology-if-you-squint, and nodded in satisfaction, pout fading. 

“So! What’re you in here for? You aren’t like my usual clients, most of them can’t afford all that shiny Schnee stuff you’ve got on!” Weiss cringed at that, worried that her name would ruin things (it would, she knew it would) and turn this girl against her just as she saw the public down here turning against her father.

Rose, oblivious, powered on, “It’s all so well fitted! You wouldn’t mind if I took a look, right? These seams are almost invisible! I wish I could get them that tight!” A whine and a blink, and Rose was behind her, a finger gone and replaced with a micro-magnifier that she held up to Weiss’s neck, “Do these seams on your neck restrict the motion of your head at all? They’re super small, but they look almost too rigid. Does your neck get stiff?” At Weiss’s mute nod, Rose squinted slightly, making a mental note, then changed her finger back with a flick of her hand, opting instead to take Weiss’s hand in her own. 

Not seeming to notice the tension and heat rising in her face at the casual touch, Rose just rambled on. “Do you have any utility mods in your hands? Any weapons? Not that I think you’d need weapons, though! I just thought someone as pretty as you should have something to protect yourself with!” A creeping blush made its way up the cyberneticist’s face as her brain caught up with her mouth, “not that I think you’re pretty- I- you ARE pretty, I just- you-”

Weiss just raised an eyebrow, not trusting herself to respond to such a candid comment. (Her own thoughts on the matter had nothing to do with it, not at all)

“I should uh, stop talking now, shouldn’t I?” Rose managed after a moment.

“Well if you want to continue showering me with compliments, then I won’t stop you.” She couldn’t keep the smirk off her face, “But that is not what I’m here for.”

Rose bounced on her toes, clapping her hands in front of her, “Right! What can I do for you today? I just got a BUNCH of new stuff, Yang brought in a great haul last night! We got enough to make a full new set of cyberlimbs! Oh, but you don’t need new ones, huh? Yours look like they’ve barely been used! Ooh, maybe we could give you something like this!” She holds up her left hand, and her forefinger and thumb glow red along the seams, twist, and split, coming together again half a second later no longer fingers, but a soldering iron. “Oh no, wait! You’d look GREAT with a set of vamps! Ooh, or-” 

Weiss caught herself staring again, this time out of pure wonder for the young woman in front of her. She stood there, in front of Weiss Schnee, a polished, perfect, 98% lifelike mannequin, and shed all pretenses of pure humanity. Seams and joints were outlined in soft red glows, her eyes had no irises nor whites, the black lens of her pupil surrounded by shimmering silver, and for gods’ sakes her fingers could turn into tools. And (just to spite her, Weiss thought bitterly) she had the nerve to stand in front of her with that damned smile on her face, like she was completely secure in her artificiality. Weiss watched her, vaguely aware that she was speaking unable to process what she was saying over the thoughts rushing like a river (and twice as loud) through her head. She watched her animated hand gestures, smiling as Rose bounced on her toes and brought her hands out wide, then clapped them back together.

“And of course, all of our tech is 100% Grimm free!”

Weiss blinked.

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

Rose smiled, but Weiss noticed (with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that she didn’t like, not one bit) that it was the first one of the night not to entirely reach her eyes. 

“Y’know, Grimm? The ghosts of the Net? Infect your cybers and make you all wacky? We’re 100% free of it, guaranteed!” 

Weiss furrowed her brow. “But Grimm… aren’t real. They’re an urban legend used to excuse delinquents’ outbursts.”

“Oh, uh, yeah!” Rose shrugged, “just, yknow, it’s a family superstition!” 

Weiss narrowed her eyes- something didn’t feel right about the sudden change in demeanor from the cyberneticist -but as soon as she focused in on it, the tension in the atmosphere faded, fog of the previous conversation cleared as Rose gestured towards the chair in the center of the room. Weiss sat with some trepidation, glancing down worriedly at the cuffs on the arms as she tried to center herself on the worn leather.

Rose hopped up on one of her workbenches, kicking her feet idly as she waited for Weiss to get comfortable. Once she’d settled in, Rose clapped her hands together (Weiss was beginning to notice a pattern) and shimmied closer on the workbench. “So! Whatcha thinkin? Anything I said earlier interest you?” 

Weiss fidgeted, her finger tapping in motions a micrometer in either direction, too finely controlled to be noticed by the naked eye (as well as most commonly-available cyberoptics) as she tried to drag to the front of her mind anything that the peppy cyberneticist had brought she had mentioned before Weiss had become absorbed in the glows of red from her limbs and those gods-damned eyes. 

“You said I would look good in… something. What was that?”

“Oh yeah! I feel like a set of Vampires would really suit you!”

Weiss blinked. “Vampires?”

“Yeah! They’re sharpened carboglass extensions to your teeth so it looks like you got fangs, so.” Rose shrugged. “Vampires!” 

The idea tumbled around in her brain for a moment before Weiss smirked. The idea of having her own literal fangs to sink into her bastard father’s neck? The option was so deliciously perfect that she simply couldn’t pass it up. (The fact that Rose said she would look good with them was also considered).

Of course this sort of mod would be incredibly obvious, but that was the point, wasn’t it? It would only be a matter of time before her father noticed them through her smile; she could deal with the consequences of her actions later. For now she would do what she had come here for, and finally take her first step in rebelling against Jacques Schnee. Besides, if her memory served (and it always did), Vampire mods were _technically_ produced by the SRC anyway, so she was well within her rights to obtain a pair.

Weiss nodded, considering. “Those do sound… acceptable. How much, and how long of an operation will it be?” 

Rose paused for a second, finger tapping her chin as she ran through the mental math. “Well, there’s not much material expense, and the operation is pretty quick, so… about 650 lien.”

Weiss nodded along. 650 was actually… considerably less than what an analogous operation would cost at an SRC subsidiary. “That sounds more than reasonable. Can this operation be done today?” 

“Yup! I just need to take a few quick measurements, then it’ll be around 10 minutes to tailor them to you!” Rose hopped off the bench, rubbing her hands together, “Just need you to give me a big ol smile!”

Weiss did her best.

“Great!” Rose flashed her a smile in return, and Weiss was suddenly very glad she was sitting down. She’d been playing political games with double-edged smiles for years, but the earnest look on Rose’s face held no duplicity, and it amazed her. How could she be like this in her line of work? How could someone so open, so honestly willing to help, exist in a world as cutthroat as this on? How could someone so modded be so human? It was humbling. 

Rose took a step back, seemingly having gotten what she’d needed, and Weiss felt the confusion in her gut settle some with the distance. “Hokay! Just need to let the printer go, and then I’ll put the fine touches on them. Should be printed in a few minutes!” 

The whirring of the printer started up in the background, the background noise providing enough mental white noise that Weiss was finally able to get her words in some semblance of order.

“I… wanted to thank you. For doing this.”

Rose cocked an eyebrow. “You know you’re paying me to do this, right?”

In spite of herself, Weiss cracked a smile. 

“Yes, you dolt, I know I’m paying you. I meant for doing this for me, specifically.” She let out a sigh at Rose’s confused look. “I’m just… I’m not used to people treating me like I’m human. I know you know who I am, it’s practically written all over my skin,” She shivered slightly at just how accurate that was, “And I… I just want you to know how grateful I am for that.”

There was a quiet moment, during which Rose gave her an odd look. Weiss nearly squirmed in her seat before the other woman finally spoke.

“You know you’re still human, right?” her voice was surprisingly forceful, “Mods or not, you’re still you in there.”

A sad smile made its way onto Weiss’ face, and she could feel the urge to cry trickle through her synapses. No tears though, never any tears.

“Thank you, but… sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.”

“Well it’s true,” The woman said as she turned back to her workstation, “You can be whoever you want to be, Weiss.”

Weiss just shook her head, seemingly incapable of ridding herself of her little half-smile. Rose just kept getting more admirable with every word she spoke. Did she truly not know of the cruelty people were capable of? Had the question of her humanity ever even crossed the woman’s mind? _You are entirely too good to be true, Rose._

“It’s Ruby.”

Weiss blinked. “Um. Excuse me?” _Oh for the love of- I said that out loud?_

The cyberneticist laughed. “You called me Rose! That’s just my working name.” Her silver eyes (artificial though they may be) danced with mirth at Weiss’s poleaxed expression, and she stuck a hand out to shake. 

“It’s Ruby to my friends.”


	3. bare your teeth (its a threat display)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weiss goes back home! Light-footed and breezy (relatively) from her time with Ruby, she’s eager to see her again and continue to bring herself more into line with who she’d like to be. (perfectly human is out of the question, obviously, but she can adjust her artificiality to be one of her liking- and now she trusts someone to do it. The only problem is that she’s got fangs now (literally) and her father isn’t pleased about this symbolic rebellion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY! HEY YOU!!! VALUED AND CHERISHED READER!!!  
> this chapter gets REALLY intense  
> there's a scene of child abuse, including emotional manipulation and physical abuse, so please please please be careful and take care of yourselves!

Despite Jacques Schnee’s best attempts, there was no way to mould someone into a morning person. 

And therefore, Weiss was not one. 

Mornings never had been a good time for her- she could still remember waking up when she was younger, feeling the sun warm on her cheek but the air cool where her sheets and blankets failed to cover. She could remember a different time, a caring mother gently shaking her awake, a loving sister with whom she would rise to meet the day. 

Faced with those memories, how could a morning in this shell be anything less than dismal? The sun still warm, the air still cold, but the sensations of both only a dull approximation of what they were. 

Mornings were horrible. 

But today, Weiss Schnee was having a good one. 

She woke with a gentle mental nudge at exactly 6:00, and as usual was awake immediately- an (un)fortunate side effect of her alarm clock being wired into her brain being that she couldn't sleep through it if she wanted to. 

With a thought and a blink she brought up her browser, surprised to note she had left a few tabs open since last night- a positively fossilized webpage for the punk band that Ruby had been playing in her workshop (Weiss refused to call it a bodyshop, even internally, that joke was so bad it should be criminal) whose frontwoman had strikingly similar silver cybernetic eyes to Ruby; did the young cyberneticist idolize the band so much?

The other tab was titled ‘The Gender Blender’ and Weiss’s breath caught as she looked at it, closing it with an almost forceful flick of her fingers and letting out a shaky breath, habitually checking back over her shoulder. There was nothing there, of course, but she felt a prickle on the back of her neck regardless. She closed her browser.

Her morning routine was similar to what one would expect an organic human’s to be- she washed her face with a synthskin-safe cleanser, gentle abrasives giving it more of a human texture than it usually held. She brushed her teeth, too, with a polishing agent designed to work on carboglas and other enamel analogues.

This morning, though, as she opened her mouth to check for things caught between her perfect teeth, a pair of deadly sharp canines stared back at her. She couldn't help the delighted smile that crept over her face, couldn't help the thrill of excitement as she ran the tip of her tongue over one wicked point and felt a prick of pain. 

For a blissful, fleeting moment, her existence narrowed to that tiny pinprick, shutting out the imperfections in her perfect shell to bask in the joy of having one piece of it feel like it was  _ hers. _

The moment, like all moments, faded. Her body caught up to her, weighing her shoulders down with her invisible burden. Today, though, it felt just a little bit lighter. 

A soft alert tone coincided with a message notification in the corner of her eye. A mental gesture brought her messaging window into focus, revealing one message from Klein Sieben:   
  
//K.Sieben has initiated chat link.   
//Link established.   
//Incoming message…   
  
[7:05]<K.Sieben>: Miss Schnee, your father requests your presence in his office at your earliest convenience.

//Connection terminated.

And just like that, the weight was as heavy as ever. 

\---

Ruby Rose was, to her sister’s chagrin, a morning person. She was the perfect blend of bright-eyed and bushy tailed at far too early of an hour to irritate even the most evenly-tempered of individuals. 

Unfortunately, Yang Xiao Long was not the most even-tempered on her best day. 

“Ruby I swear to the Fucking gods if you don't stop bouncing around I'm gonna take your Dust-damned legs off and put them on the top shelf.”

Ruby paused in her shuffling around their tiny kitchenette to stand in Yang’s doorway, hands planted on her hips. “Oh yeah? Well I guess I can just throw away this bag of coffee Ren got us then! Since  _ obviously  _ you don't want any of it.” 

“Oh you little shit you wouldn’t DARE-” 

She grinned as she heard a frantic scrabbling from her sister’s bedroom, stepping back from the door just as a wild mane of blonde bedhead and a pair of panicked (if bleary) lilac eyes skidded into the hall. 

“Ruby where the fuc-” the (in all honestly still asleep) blonde was cut off by a still-steaming cup off coffee being shoved into her hands. She blinked at it. She looked back at Ruby. “Once I drink this caffeine you’re done for.”

“Okay!” said Ruby, far too cheerful at the threat of maiming and potential death. (Or tickling. That was almost as bad.) 

A few quiet minutes later, properly caffeinated, Yang turned her newfound attention to Ruby, who was singing quietly to herself as she rinsed out the coffeepot. (Yang was old-fashioned like that, despite her sister’s insistence that she could build a coffeemaker into her arm.  _ Into your arm, Yang! Imagine the possibilities! _ ) She let a grin (fully awake and shit-eating) slide onto her face as she spoke.

“So… I noticed you had a visitor last night, Rubaloo! What was she in for?” 

“Oh! Yeah! She just wanted some cosmetic work done, I printed off some vamps for her and she bounced. Nothing super interesting about it, honestly.”

The grin grew predatory.

“Oh yeah? Nothing interesting about the fact that  _ Weiss Schnee _ came all the way down from Atlas to visit little old you?

_ That _ got her attention. 

“Wh-what do you mean, just to visit me?”

Yang just shrugged, resting her chin on her hand. “I dunno, sis, it’s just kinda weird that Weiss Schnee, SRC Weiss Schnee, came all the way down from Atlas to pay to get a pair of vamps instead of getting them installed in one of the  _ dozens _ of Schnee-owned bodyshops up in the Cloud there, don’t you think?”

The countertop creaked as Ruby hopped up onto it, leaning forward to prop her elbows on her knees with a sigh. “I guess I thought about that… I’unno though, Yang, something seemed kind of weird about her.” 

“Like bad weird?” 

Ruby shook her head. “Nah, not bad. More like… apprehensive? Like she was scared of what she was doing or something.”

“Really?” Yang cocked her head, “I heard there’s some wackadoo shit going on with her family, maybe they don’t want her getting work done off the Cloud?” 

“Hmm… that could be it. I do hope she comes back, though!” 

Yang’s smirk was back. “Why’s that, ladykiller?”

“Did you see her mods, Yang?! She’s practically full-metal! And they’re all top of the line! I hardly ever get to mess with Schnee tech, so I’m gonna take what I can get!”

“Right, yeah, it’s totally because of her mods and not for any other reason at all.”

Ruby huffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever you gotta tell yourself, lil’ sis.” Yang’s smirk was splitting her face at this point.

“Whaaaat? I just wanna, y’know, see what’s under her hood is all.”

Yang practically spit her coffee out at that. “Phrasing, Roobles!  _ Phrasing _ !”

“Oh my god, Yang! Not like that!” The blush on Ruby’s face might’ve said otherwise, but she would staunchly deny it. “I seriously think she needs help though, and I think we can give it to her.” 

“You and your dang bleeding heart,” Yang said, shaking her head. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Roob.” 

“Don’t I always?” 

“No! You don’t!” 

Things devolved from there.

\---

Weiss straightened her already impeccably straight collar, hands only not shaking by virtue of her artificiality. She bit her lip, the sharp twinge of sensation from her new features striking discord within her- simultaneous joy at her newfound autonomy, and fear at what lay behind the door in front of her. 

Before she could continue to agonize, she stepped forward and knocked twice. 

“Enter.” 

With a sharp inhale and squared shoulders, Weiss stepped through the door of her father’s office.

It, and the man that dwelled within, looked the same as always- spartan, minimalistically decorated, and wholly unforgiving. Nothing seemed out of place, everything was in order, but that did little to soothe the frisson of nerves Weiss felt snaking up her spine. 

“Good morning, father.” 

Jacques Schnee glanced up from his desk, then immediately dismissed her presence’s importance. “Yes, yes. Now, sit. We must discuss today’s meeting with Adel, and the shoot you will be taking part in. Obviously, your newest improvements are not to be shown on camera before we reveal them ourselves, do you understand?”

“Yes, father.”

“Good. Now-” his gaze snapped up, zeroed in, and Weiss felt her heart stop. The man’s eyes narrowed and he sat up in his chair. “Weiss, show me your smile.”

It sounded like something a father would tell his daughter when he wanted to take a picture. It was so much more sinister than that.

She knew this would happen. She knew this was coming. She knew she would have to deal with the consequences of her actions eventually. But now that she was here, staring those consequences in their cold, heartless eyes… Her palms would be sweating if they were still capable of such a thing. 

Weiss’s synthetic shell injected a dose of oxytocin into her system in response to cortisol levels 38% above baseline, and her vision cleared. She could see every perfectly styled hair on her father’s (still natural) face, and she could see the pure disdain in his eyes. She was going to have to grin and bear it. And so she grinned.

For one sweet moment there was a feeling of incredible satisfaction that flooded her system as Jacques Schnee’s eyes widened in shock. 

That feeling however, was quickly replaced by a sharp pain as he struck her across the face.

His face twisted in rage as she stood, unmoving, and he rose from behind his desk, his voice quiet in the dangerous way that a blade is. 

“What is this, Weiss?”

“What do you mean, Father?” Weiss fought to keep her voice from shaking. She was barely successful. 

“Do  _ not _ be smart with me, girl. Is this your idea of rebellion? Is that it? Were you merely unsatisfied with your appearance? Do you think that this,” he sneered, “ _ pedestrian _ modification is an improvement over what I have provided for you? Over the  _ perfection  _ I have molded you into? Because if so, girl, you are  _ sorely  _ mistaken.”

Weiss felt a prickle up the back of her neck as something truly dangerous entered Jacques’ eyes. Something that froze the words at the back of her throat and felt like ice crawling up her spine as she fought and fought the urge to run.

“I will take the liberty of rescheduling your shoot with Adel to tomorrow. You will remove that…  _ hideous _ excuse of cosmetic modification in time for you to participate in said shoot unmarred. Do I make myself clear?”

Weiss felt her tongue prick at the point of her fang as she made to speak, and halted mid-word. The sensation recalled a memory of a hopelessly out of place silver-eyed cyberneticist walking the streets of Atlas like she belonged there, and for just a moment, Weiss felt her resolve solidify. 

“The schematics and production licenses for this model of dental modification are owned and distributed by the Company, I am well within my authority to have them added to my chassis.” 

“Authority? Weiss, my darling, you misunderstand. You have no authority here. Every single part of your body was produced in this Company’s factories. You could easily be assembled from a warehouse shelf in a matter of hours. Your entire  _ being _ belongs to the Schnee Robotics Corporation, girl, and by extension that entire being belongs to  _ me. _ ”

“But-”

“What is it about your body being proprietary that you are finding difficult to understand, daughter? If you do not mind your tongue, I could with but a single message have it entirely  _ repossessed. _ If you want to retain your pathetic excuse for humanity, and not spend the rest of your consciousness’s existence inside a cleaning robot, you will  _ shut your mouth and do as I say. _ ” 

Weiss froze on the spot, tongue sealed to the roof of her mouth as she struggled to breathe. She was suddenly very aware of her new fangs pressing against the inside of her lips, the way they settled perfectly in her mouth. Her mouth opened and she responded to the man who claimed to be her father, but the words that came out were not hers.

“Yes, father," said the box in her throat, the little bespoke vocoder designed to mimic the voice her father stole from her. Two blue eyes, perfectly detailed, an exact mirror of her mother’s, watched him blandly as he acknowledged her response and dismissed her. The legs and body that turned and walked from his office, the arms that swayed at her sides, were all proprietary pieces of the billion-lien showroom model that Weiss Schnee had been assigned to pilot. A shell; lifeless, emotionless, inorganic. Compliant.

Inside that shell raged a hurricane.

Weiss Schnee had spent nearly the entirety of her thus-far miserable existence in hiding. From the public, from the man who called himself her father, and from herself. As much as she hated this shell he had forced her into, the one upside was that it made hiding that much easier. A synthetic body meant that she had exponentially more control over her physical self than she ever could have otherwise. She had learned a long time ago the secret of schooling her face into a preset expression; eyes frigid, mouth set, so as to not reveal her emotions. No matter how much she panicked or broke down on the inside, her mask would stay perfectly composed.

And so, Weiss Schnee walked out of that office with her head held high and not a single fault in her step. She strode back to her quarters, not a soul aware of the rage simmering just beneath her projected calm.

She remained composed when she returned to her room. 

She was collected as she divested her employee benefits package. Technically, she was employed by the company, and that came with an extensive investment portfolio- one that she emptied into discrete personal accounts that could in no way be traced back to Weiss Schnee.

Because she couldn’t be Weiss Schnee anymore. That friendly cyberneticist in the Vale district had shown her that there could be more to life than her existence as the company’s puppet. She couldn’t live under the heel of the SRC anymore.

The only emotion she displayed on the way out of Schnee Tower was a small smile, and whispered words of gratitude as she hugged Klein for what she was sure would be the last time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well that was a doozy ;; hopefully the worst is behind u, weiss!!! (or is it)
> 
> also! id like to link a [Discord](https://discord.gg/kVQVMew) that im pretty active in! it's owned by the wonderful [Junior,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniorthib/pseuds/juniorthib) author of [ Grounded Lightning ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17998961), and it's a dedicated pollination server! its a great gang yall should hop in if ur not already 
> 
> catch yall in the next one! love u!


	4. every closed door is just the intro of a brand new story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weiss is on the outs with the old man! Ruby says the exact right things at the exact right times, as usual, and Yang is a nuisance (but we love her anyways).  
> Gender is hard! Ruby has half of Batman Syndrome. Weiss has Ruby's fingers inside her! (not like that... unless?)  
> Weiss hates her dad. Then Ruby hates Weiss's dad. Yang also hates Weiss's dad, but she's only in this chapter for comic relief. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL HEY HOWDY FOLKS ITS BEEN A HOT SECOND HUH

Dread settled heavily across Weiss’s shoulders, feeling for all the world like a pair of hands trying to press her down through the concrete she walked on. There was an ambient noise down here that Atlas, in all its austerity, never had. It grounded her, the chattering of other people and the noise of machinery reminding her that she wasn’t in the floating district anymore. Despite her expectations she found herself… liking Vale. It lacked the harsh sterility of the district she’d spent most of her life in. (it also definitely had nothing to do with the cute cyberneticist who lived here, not at all).

 _I could do without the paranoia, though,_ she thought as she shrugged further back into the hood covering most of her face, doing her best to look like a casual shopper as a security drone passed behind her with a soft whir of microjet engines. The drone paused with a series of quiet beeps, and Weiss’s shoulders drew together- tensing, ready to run, the anxiety rising in her with each passing heartbeat- as the drone beeped once more and moved on. 

She let out an uncharacteristic sigh. It seemed counterproductive- her cybernetic shell hardly needed to breathe, so a sigh was an inefficient use of energy. Now seemed like an appropriate time, however, and if nothing else it was a jab in the face of her own nature. What was the point of efficiency anyway? Her shell produced more than enough excess energy for her to indulge in a multitude of unnecessary actions, who was there to say she couldn’t… live a little, as it were?

No one. There was no one to dictate such things for her anymore. And there never would be again, if she had anything to say about it.

She smiled as her thoughts wandered through such fields. Her feet felt lighter on the pavement, somehow, as she reveled in her newfound freedom. A small nagging sat in the back of her mind, but she pushed it down and ignored it, preferring greener pastures. It was… almost overwhelming in a sense. She had never been granted this much freedom in her entire life. Her childhood had been scheduled and dictated by her father and the corporation. Each day planned out to meticulously maximize her impact as the face of the company.

For the first time, Weiss’ life was in her own hands.

And she honestly wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Weiss glanced down and realized her body had taken her along a now-familiar path. She allowed another, slight smile as she found herself in front of a sticker-covered door next to a series of neon tubes twisted into the likeness of a rose. 

She raised a hand and rapped against the steel. Much to her surprise, the door swung open slightly on its own. 

Weiss' eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. The cyberneticist had left her door open? She pushed against the heavy steel with her foot and peeked into the workshop beyond.

"Hello?" She called, her voice echoing slightly in the empty space. Only silence answered her and her confusion grew. Where were the sisters? Where was the too-bright personality that made this empty shop feel so ~~cozy~~ cramped?

With no small amount of trepidation, Weiss pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the workshop proper. It felt so empty without the lively energy of its resident siblings. The lights were on and the place was clearly lived in, but it was also most certainly missing something without them.

Something caught her eye as she was roaming the empty room; a small, square photograph tucked into the top of one of the workshop’s pegboards. It stood out as the only obviously sentimental item in the room, most everything else was scattered tools and scraps of metal that Ruby seemed to be working on. Her curiosity getting the better of her, Weiss reached up, irritably stretching to her tip-toes to reach the (real instant-develop!) picture and get a closer look.

The picture depicted something that Weiss was decidedly unfamiliar with: a happy family. A tall, black-haired woman with glowing red eyes held a much younger Ruby, milky-white eyes squinted against the camera's flash. An almost carbon copy of Ruby stood next to the woman, shining white seams lining her skin instead of the red of Ruby's mods. The same hauntingly familiar silver eyes stared out at her from the photo, accompanied by what was clearly the signature blinding Rose family smile. A blonde toddler rode on her shoulders, hands fisted in her long, red hair with a look of childish ferocity.

Weiss felt an unfamiliar smile crinkle her eyes as she took in the photo, widening bit by bit as she took in its details, absorbed in this perfect representation of what family at its best can be. 

She was so absorbed, in fact, that she didn't hear the footsteps in the hall until the door to the workshop burst open. 

She dropped the photo with a start, and the figure entering the room tensed at the sound before, with a whine and a pop, blurring and disappearing from view in a haze of red light.

Weiss just stood for a moment, mouth slightly agape, before remembering herself and almost diving to pick up the photo from the ground. With it safely back on the table, Weiss hazarded a step towards the door. 

“...Ruby? Is that you?” 

A sigh of relief carried past the door as Ruby stepped back in, a hand to her chest. 

“Weiss! Give a girl some warning next time, you almost gave me a heart attack!” 

(it shouldn't have, but the mention of a next time made Weiss’s chest swell with… something) 

“Yes, well. There are cardiac implants available that would make that an impossibility, you should look into them.” 

Ruby let out a little bubble of a laugh and gave Weiss a smile. (damnable) “It’s nice to see you too!” 

Weiss rolled her eyes. "I was surprised to arrive to an empty workshop. You even left the door open."

"Shoot! Uh, yeah, I uh, had to run and grab something from a friend!" That was when Weiss noticed the bag slung over Ruby's shoulder. She raised an eyebrow, but the young woman interrupted her before she could ask. 

"Oh, you found my picture!" Ruby said with a (well-masked) sad smile, motioning to the picture. "It's, uh. it's a good one."

The cyberneticist sat down on the couch and bent to fiddle with her legs, a series of soft clicks and snaps sounding before she set a pair of braces Weiss hadn't even noticed up on the table, then patted the couch beside her.

“C’mon, sit with me. I can tell you're curious.” 

Weiss did, because she was, and she absolutely didn't notice how the cushion dipped under her weight and brought the two of them close, and even if she did she DEFINITELY didn't pay attention to how her shoulder burned as Ruby brushed against it as she settled back into the couch, photo in hand. 

“So that's your family?” 

“Yep! That's my mom, Summer, and my mama, Raven.” There was a solemn tone to the young woman’s voice, and something told Weiss that neither of the two older women were around anymore. Her mind wandered to the band she had been looking up the other night, the one she’d heard Ruby listening to during her first visit. She didn’t think it was a coincidence.

“Were they musicians?” She asked, innocently enough.

Ruby’s tinkling laughter made Weiss’ lips turn upwards slightly (she couldn’t help it), “You really did your research, huh? Yeah, they were both in a band called STRQ, how’d you know?”

“I may have looked up the music you were listening to last time I came by,” She glanced away, suppressing the blush that wanted to force its way onto her synthetic face. “Their music is surprisingly enjoyable.”

“Aw thanks!” Ruby was absolutely beaming now, and Weiss was having a hard time keeping her systems under control, “They were both really talented, but you know how Atlas feels about independent artists. They didn’t exactly have the easiest time about it, especially with how. Um. Anti-establishment they were.”

Weiss huffed. “You can say they were anti-SRC, their music really doesn’t leave much of that sentiment up to the imagination.” 

“Well! I was TRYING to be polite!” Ruby huffed right back. “People down here loved them though, even though everything they did had to be undercover.” 

“I would imagine so, their message is very… actionable.” Weiss paused for a moment. “Do you mind if I… No, nevermind, it’s not my business.”

“You wanna know what happened?”

“Well… I’ll admit I’m curious,” Weiss conceded, “But it’s your personal business, and I shouldn’t pry.”

“No, it’s okay!” Ruby bumped Weiss’s shoulder. “I love talking about my moms! Okay, so,” she shuffled in her seat and sat up a bit, before rolling right along. 

“Mom was a really talented cyberneticist, she started this place and really made a name for herself as someone who’d help anyone she could, and to heck with anyone who tried to stop her. I’m just kinda working with the leftovers here,” She gave a quiet chuckle at that, “But uh, all sorts of people were interested in her skills and she… she got mixed up in some bad stuff. I don’t know all the details, but something went down when I was super young, and she didn’t make it out alive.”

Weiss reached out and put her hand on Ruby’s shoulder.

“Mama is still alive though,” She continued, a sad smile on her face, “At least as far as I know. She got a nasty Grimm infection right after Yang was born. We thought she’d gotten it under control, but it kept popping up. Last time I saw her it nearly got the better of her. She… left to keep us safe.”

The emotion rising in Ruby’s eyes was deep, and old, and shone through the cracks of the happy, nostalgic demeanor Ruby was trying to pull off. Weiss frowned. She still wasn’t sure about this Grimm business. All her life she’d been told they were just the boogeyman in the closet, stories told to children to keep them away from unreputable cybernetics. But… She didn’t think Ruby would make something like that up. Not something this personal. Besides, her father had been the one to tell her most of those things, and he was most certainly not a reliable source.

She moved her arm to rest around Ruby’s shoulders. Was this too forward? Her childhood had certainly not furnished her with the skills to deal with this sort of emotional distress, but she found that she cared about Ruby’s feelings, and so she would provide what comfort she could.

And, like her father always loved to say, a good deed never goes unpunished.

With a hearty bang of the door opening, history repeated itself. Instantly, they were on opposite ends of the couch- Weiss with her spine ramrod straight, staring directly forward, Ruby with her silver eyes wide in the headlights. The blonde form of Yang Xiao-Long stomped in through the now open door, an array of bags slung over her shoulders and arms.

“I’m baaaack~!” She cried, closing the door behind her, “I managed to score a pretty intact box of stuff for Zwei, along with enough supps to last us a good week or two. Plaza was a madhouse though, you wouldn’t believe how crazy it was, and it’s a Tuesday! Who goes shopping on a Tues-”

She stopped, having finally noticed the two girls sitting awkwardly on the couch. A shit-eating grin split her face as she dropped the last few bags of groceries.  
  
“Oh hey, Ice Queen, didn’t see you there! Here for some more of my sister’s magic fingers?”

“Y-yang!” Ruby sputtered as her sister cackled from the other side of the room and Weiss fought the losing battle against her blush with silent valor.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Yang’s voice echoed from the hall as Ruby shoved her. She cleared her throat to try and choke back a blush.

“So!” she continued brightly, apparently resolved to ignore the embarrassment of her sister barging in, scaring them red, then barging right back out. “You’re back soon! Did something go wrong with the vamps or something? I know we don't really have an official warranty or anything but I’d for sure be happy to-”

Weiss (ever a quick learner) cut Ruby off before she could get too big a head of steam going. “No, no nothing of the sort. I… found myself in the area and thought I might once again avail myself of your services.” 

Ruby furrowed her brow for a moment, (translating) before a smile brightened her face once more. “Cool! That's awesome! What were you looking to have done?”

“Well, it’s. It’s something rather more personal than what was done last time.”

Ruby blinked. “Personal how?”

“W-well I was hoping that you could replace my chest-”

“Wait wait wait wait Weiss I’m flattered you think that I can do that but that’s full-on surgery, and I’ve never actually converted a chest cavity before, and Dust can only do so much for help and-”

Weiss cut her off (again, she’s getting good at Ruby wrangling) with folded arms and a pointed look, raising an eyebrow as Ruby sputtered to a stop. 

“Don’t panic before I even finish speaking, dolt. My chest cavity is almost entirely synthetic already.”

Ruby ducked her head sheepishly, and motioned for Weiss to continue.

“As I was _saying_ , I’d like you to replace my chestplate with- with a flatter one. It- I-”

Ruby shook her head, hands raised pleadingly. “Nonono you don't have to justify anything to me! Especially if you don't want to, I get it!! It’s your business to share when you want to, and not a second earlier.”

A rare, grateful smile spread over Weiss’s face. “Thank you, Ruby. That means a lot.”

“Of course,” Ruby said, a small, shy smile of her own breaking, “just happy to help.”

* * *

Weiss shifted, the sensation of being so… exposed not necessarily a foreign one, but definitely not one that she was overly comfortable with. The thought of literally being open to someone, completely at their mercy, was something that had always pricked at the back of her mind when cyberneticists at Schnee corp operated on her. 

Hearing Ruby’s humming and interested little sounds as she poked around in Weiss’s back, though, certainly served to make it more… bearable. 

“So!” Ruby said, clapping her hands together, “we’re pretty much ready to start the Dust diagnostic! Just a few little things I need to adjust on my end, and we’ll get ‘em in ya and see what's under your hood!” 

“Ruby Rose!” Weiss squeaked in indignation, her exposed cybernetics lighting up as embarrassment flowed through her. She managed to keep the actual blush from reaching her face, but there was only so much she could do while strapped to a table with her chassis torn apart. 

“Shoot, sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, I promise!” 

“Phrasing, for Brothers’ sake,” She grumbled, calming down, “You’d think you grew up in the Outlands or something!”

“Blame Yang!” Ruby whined, “Her dumb stupid dad jokes are rubbing off on me. You’ve seen what she’s like! If I’m alone with her for too much longer, I’ll become like that…” her voice turned serious and she leaned down so she could meet Weiss’s eyes. “Weiss. If it comes to that… I need you to kill me.”

Weiss rolled her eyes. “Yes, I have been unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of her terrible sense of humor,” she huffed, completely ignoring Ruby’s plea, “But with _that_ aside, this is the second time today you mentioned Dust. Is this some… back alley, lower-city product that I’m unfamiliar with?”

“Oh! No, I’m pretty sure you’d be familiar with it, just you probably know it by some brand name. Nanomachine swarms, surgical assistants, diagnostics and compatibility assurance, that sort of thing?”

“Ah, yes, of course. I’m… familiar. I believe I’ve had a retinue of them in my chassis for most of my adult life. Although I am not sure if you can interface with the more… official models.”

“Nah, the interfacing really isn’t that hard if you know what you’re doing,” Ruby mumbled, half buried in her shell again, poking around with her tools. 

It was an odd sensation, though one which Weiss was intimately familiar with due simply to the vast number of times she’d been operated on. She couldn’t _feel_ what Ruby was doing per se, there were no nerve analogs built into the interior of her chassis for precisely this reason, but she was aware of it in other ways. Temperature and pressure sensors could detect the fingers and tools as they poked around inside of her chest, and she was aware when connections were broken or reformed.

Just one more thing on the list that separated her from her humanity.

“Alright, everything looks good, and I’ve got the connection established, so I’m gonna go ahead and dive in, alright?”

“Dive in?” Weiss’ voice was more curious than concerned in the face of more lingo she didn’t understand.

“I’ll be taking personal control of the swarm to get them started. That way I don’t have to deal with any clunky third party interfacing or anything.”

“Oh, alright, well… At your leisure then.” Weiss tried to offer her a smile, but it was strained.

Ruby smiled back, letting her eyes fall closed as she took control of the roughly 300 million nanomachines in their capsules, a pounding starting up behind her eyes as she gave the command to dissolve the protective coating around the swarm, the feeling in her hands blurring to static. She activated the Dust with a mental referral to the code packet she had injected it with, then gritted her teeth. 

If Weiss had been facing the other way, she might have seen hints of a soft silver glow from beneath the cyberneticist’s eyelids as Ruby pushed her will into the swarm, driving them to dig a little deeper, look a little harder, find a little more than should technically be possible. 

If there was something for the swarm to find, Ruby wanted it to be found. 

As she felt the tingling connection to the swarm in her fingers fading, there was a brief tickling at the back of [her|the swarm]’s consciousness. [she|the many] strained for one last moment of focus before their separation, and briefly, ever so briefly [the mechanic|the tool] glimpsed something [foreign|endemic] [protective|aggressive|curious], but before [she|the many] could get a better look, the connection faded and Ruby opened her eyes, blinking away the last vestiges of silver light.

“Ooooookay!” she said, still with a slightly far-off look, “the swarm’s fully self-directed now, so it should just be a minute or so of a kinda pins and needles-y feeling as the swarm settles, and we’ll have the diagnostic done by the morning! I can get working on your new plate in the meantime, though.”

Weiss offered as much of an appreciative gesture as she could, face first on the chair as she was, and in spite of the sinking in her heart when she heard ‘morning.’. “That sounds wonderful, Ruby. When could we expect the operation to take place?”

“Hm… tomorrow morning, I think,” she said, pulling a stool out from under her workbench and plopping down on it, “we’ll need to let the Dust really get a good look at you, just to make sure there’s zero chance of compatibility issues with your cybers, especially those real important ones in your chest.”

Weiss turned to offer as passable a smile as she could in the face of the drowning feeling threatening to overwhelm her, the thought that she would have to return there for another night, be in his vicinity again, but as she opened her eyes Ruby was right there with a heartbreakingly gentle smile in return. 

“Of course,” she said, “you should probably stay the night, to make sure I can work on anything urgent the diagnostic picks up.”

Weiss started. “A-are you sure? I wouldn’t want to put you out at all…” she trailed off at the sight of Ruby’s raised eyebrow, finding the look as devastatingly effective when used against her as when she used it on others.

“It’s not even a little bit of trouble, Weiss. The couch out here is really comfy, and even though you’re like super fancy and everything, the blanket on my bed is LITERALLY the softest thing I’ve ever felt so I think you’ll be okay.” 

“Y-your- I couldn’t possibly-”

Ruby sighed with a tolerant smile (this was an odd reversal that Weiss was NOT expecting, but also… wasn’t altogether unenjoyable) “Weiss, one of the most important things my mom taught me about was taking proper care of people that are important to you. And you are! So take the dang bed!” 

Weiss pursed her lips in an (eventually futile) effort to prevent a smile from spreading across her face at Ruby’s admission, feeling once again the psychosomatic pressure behind her eyes of tears (this time, of joy) unshed.

“I’ve said this entirely too much today, but thank you, Ruby.”

Ruby smiled that infernal tender smile again. “Of course, Weiss.” 

At the same moment, both of them realized that Weiss’s back was still completely open, and Ruby bent back over her, face flushing red, to finish fussing and closing her up. 

“A-anyways, you said you just wanted something flatter, right?”

“I… yes” _Right back into it, huh?_ Weiss cursed herself for the lack of confidence in her voice. She _knew_ she wanted this, but confessing that information and those feelings to someone else was more challenging than she had anticipated. 

Ruby, bless (curse) her heart, picked up on that. “Is… everything ok?”

Weiss hesitated. She was in this deep already, wasn’t she? What was the harm in confiding a bit more? She didn’t need to take in the deep breath, but she did it anyway. It helped her center herself, to grasp her elusive emotions and find a way to put them into words.

“No.” She said, firmly, “Things are not particularly ok. I walked out on my father yesterday, and to be quite honest with you, I’m not quite sure where to go from here. All I know is that… if I’m going to live this life, I want it to be mine, not his.”

“Holy shit, Weiss,” Ruby’s eyes were wide, “You walked out on him?! What happened? Did he do something? Was it the vamps?!? Oh god that was a supid question of course it was, but what happened? He overreacted to them didn’t he? Of course he would! You’rethefaceofhiscompanyandIputanunsanctionedmodonyouandhemusthave-”

“Ruby Rose.” 

Ruby clamped her mouth shut.

“Yes. He saw the fangs and he... didn’t react well. He…” Weiss paused, swallowing down the emotions that were pushing to make themselves known. “He treats me like _property_ . Property that had been sullied merely because I had changed something of my own volition, without his permission. He threatened to have my chassis _repossessed_. Who does that to their own child?”

If her body was capable, she would be crying right now. Rivers of tears would be pouring out of her eyes and cascading down her porcelain cheeks. But instead it all came out with a distinct lack of emotion. Her body wouldn’t let her cry, and so she was rigid. Robotic. Her limbs had locked up and her face was settled into its perfectly serene resting expression.

Ruby, for her part, was silent through it all, watching Weiss with wide silver eyes. Did she know about the cruelties of Jacques Schnee? Weiss imagined not. It was not exactly public knowledge, but the SRC’s dirty laundry _was_ something of an open secret in the lower city.

“Weiss that’s…”

“I would like to distance myself from him as much as possible.” Her voice had recovered some of her earlier confidence, the emotions in her mind having run their course a bit. It wasn’t a new feeling, after all. “And this is where I would like to start. I’ve done quite a bit of thinking since we last talked, Miss Rose, and I think it’s time I start making this body mine. I am no longer the face of the Schnee Robotics Corporation, my fath- _Jacques Schnee’s_ obedient puppet. He manufactured this synthetic shell in his preferred image, and it is not an image that I identify with any longer.”

There was a moment of silence.

“So yes, I would like a flatter chest plate. One that is more androgynous, please.”

“Right, uh… I can do that,” Ruby’s voice was quiet, and her eyes were shining with concern, “Weiss…”

“And Ruby…”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you could let me cry again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyes emoji hopefully we'll see you in less than uhhhh 4 whole ass months next time
> 
> also! id like to link a [Discord](https://discord.gg/kVQVMew) that im pretty active in! it's owned by the wonderful [Junior,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juniorthib/pseuds/juniorthib) author of [ Grounded Lightning ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17998961), and it's a dedicated pollination server! its a great gang yall should hop in if ur not already


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